


In Which Miss Thing Gets Lost (and then Found)

by woodlands



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 10:50:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6981316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodlands/pseuds/woodlands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grace leaves her favorite toy at Steve's, who can't seem to find it on his own and definitely requires some assistance from Danny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Miss Thing Gets Lost (and then Found)

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, I almost called this "toys 'r us" so be thankful I thought of something else in time!
> 
> Unbeta'd (where does one even find a beta in this here town?) so feel free to point out any typos or spelling errors if you come across them!

It starts with Grace’s oldest Barbie, Miss Thing, who has only a handful of hairs left on her head and a truly scary lime green dress she's never been changed out of. Danny had bought it for her at the FAO Schwarz on 5th Ave, weeks before the store closed for good, and it had gone through the wash twice, been briefly chewed on by a neighbor’s dog, and traveled the hundreds of miles from Jersey to Hawaii tucked under Grace’s arm.

At nine, she’s probably a little old for Barbies, and for the most part she’s graduated to things more age-appropriate, but Miss Thing is still toted along in her bag whenever she goes to Danny’s for the weekend. She’d brought Miss Thing in the car with her on the way to Steve’s Beach, insisting the entire way that Steve’s Beach was inherently better than Kahanamoku Beach, that they didn’t need lifeguards because Steve bought her floaties, which, Danny had to admit, was pretty cute.

Five hours and several (four?) beers later, Danny can’t quite recall why he’d been so adamant about the public beach. You can’t drink beer on the beach, for one. For two, here, there’s the grill, and Steve’s ability to make sweet, sweet music with a spatula. And C, of course, there’s Steve, marching around in his board shorts and cutoff Navy tee, slightly sunburnt. Steve, who hands him a perfectly grilled burger and slumps into the chair next to him, squinting down toward the water, where Grace is digging the world’s worst-designed moat for the elaborate sand pile she’s built.

“You got a future architect in the family, Danny." 

Danny looks up from where he’s been circling the burger around in his hands, determining the best tactical approach. He grins. “Yup, she’s a visionary. She’s already got a full ride to architecture school, only she turned it down ‘cause summer camp overlaps with freshman orientation.”

“She going to cheerleading camp again this summer?" 

“Yeah. Loves it.”

Steve leans forward and perches his forearms on his knees, then looks over at Danny, who’s finally located the path of least mess and is working his way through the burger. “Cheerleading’s a good sport for her. She’ll build some muscle, keep her cardio up--s’good.”

Danny peers at him. “She’s nine. What does an nine-year-old need cardio for, huh? You think she’s not getting enough cardio?”

“I’m just saying, Danny, cardio’s important, especially since, you know, heart problems run in the family.” 

The burger almost goes flying. “What! Heart problems!” 

Steve’s grinning, riling Danny up totally transparently. “Yeah, you know. I figured that’s why you were lagging so far behind on that bust last week.” 

God, he looks good like that, smug and infuriatingly unashamed. “I’ll have you know, my friend, that I was lagging for the simple reason that when you jumped straight out of the driver’s seat of my car and into direct fire, you fucking locked me in. In my own car! I had to climb across the front seat to get out!”

“It’s  called a child safety lock for a reason, Danny.”

“Don’t get me started!” He’s finished his burger only to find he’s dripped ketchup all over his palm, which he wipes against the back of Steve’s shirt. “A man, Steven, should not have to climb over the console to get out of his own car. Especially when that man is wearing a tac vest, which does not make it very easy to do any scrambling.”

“It’s true, that’s a very good point.”

“God, shut up.”

They sit like that for awhile, sipping at their beers, grinning. Danny looks over and Steve has his eyes closed, head tilted back against the chair, sun dappling across his face as the palm trees bustle against the wind. He looks good like that, and Danny makes himself look away, like he always does.

A minute later, construction on the moat seems to have wrapped up, because Grace clambers to her feet and is currently casting around for something in the sand. “Danno!”

“What, babe?”

“Where’s the bucket?”

He dusts his hands and stands up, makes a show of bringing his hand up to his face to shield his eyes from the sun. “I don’t see a bucket, Monkey. I think we musta left it at home.” The grass is cool under his bare feet as he marches down to the water, feeling more than seeing Steve getting up and following him down.

She slumps a little, but he’s close enough to see that she’s eyeing him warily, almost certain he’s pulling her leg. “But we brought it. It had the shovels in it.”

It’s right there, a few yards away, half-buried under Steve’s discarded beach towel. “Well, what color was it?”

“Blue. Remember, Danno? You put it on your head before we got in the car.”

“Oh, yeah. Right. Oh, is that it?”

“That’s the ocean.” She’s rolling her eyes, Danny’s willing to take the blame for that skill set. “I need to fill the moat, what should I use?”

“I gotcha, Gracie,” Steve tells her, coming up behind Danny, and jogs over to retrieve the bucket, flip flops kicking sand up against his calves.

When he hands it to her, she heads straight for the water. Danny yells after her. “Hey! Grace! What do you say!”

Struggling a little with the full bucket, she tilts her head up towards them but keeps her eyes on the prize, focused in a way only a nine-year-old can be. “Thanks, Uncle Steve!” The water sloshes everywhere, and the bucket dips down into the sand a few times, but she makes it to the construction site and pours the water in, collapsing some of the walls and generally making a mess.

Danny squats down. “Want some help, Monkey?”

She pauses, looks up at Steve, who makes an exaggeratedly skeptical face and shakes his head. Danny tilts both palms out at Steve in an unspoken _et tu, Brute?_ and tries to look reliable and guileless when Grace turns her attention back on him.

“Why don’t you make your own castle, Danno? Steve can help me with mine.”

He falls back onto his ass and throws an arm over his forehead. “Betrayed! Betrayed by my own daughter, the one to whom I have given life!” And by Steve, who is cracking up, halfway down to the water with the bucket. Danny gestures after him. “Just what does he have that I don’t?”

“Military training!” Steve yells, just as Grace frowns down at her father and says, “Steve’s a Navy sea lion. That’s what they teach you in Navy school, Danno.”

“Ah, so he just has a better education. See, Grace, I’m glad you’re learning this early, teach you to focus on your grades instead of boys.”

Grace isn’t listening any longer, too busy scooping moat water onto her castle, making more misshapen towers, so Danny tilts back into the sand, closes his eyes. He listens to the sound of Steve’s flip flops slapping against the soles of his feet, of Grace shuffling around in the sand, of the waves hitting the shore. “Sure you don’t want my help, though? I might not be good at construction but I can sure fetch water like nobody’s business, you know.”

“I know, Danno.”

“Or digging, I’m very good at that.”

“Mmhmm.”

When he sits back up, Steve is crouched down next to Grace and is hard at work re-digging the moat. Danny groans and pulls himself up, shuffling a few feet away and planting a stick dramatically in the sand. “Well, then,” he says, twisting it around to stabilize it, “I will just have to build my own, superior, castle. And the troops in my castle will wage war on the troops in your castle, and we will win, see if we don’t.”

Both Grace and Steve squint at him, unimpressed. In the end, the tide comes in and obliterates both castles before any war can be waged, which is probably for the best--Danny’s not sure he’d get very far in a tactical confrontation against a Navy SEAL and a third-grader.

-

Grace’s curfew is at seven, which always feels so early. “See you next week, Monkey,” he says, hand on her shoulder, “Make sure you call me at least once, okay? Tell me how things are going. I don’t hear from you, I get nervous, I figure you’ve forgotten all about me. 

She looks at him very solemnly, shrugs. “I wouldn’t.”

It melts him, that look. “I know, kiddo, c’mere.”

She hugs him, careful not to drop the rabbit cage in one hand and her two pillows in the other. “I’ll call you tomorrow after school, I promise."

“Sounds good.” He straightens, rings the doorbell. “You got everything? You checked before we left Steve’s, right?”

“Yeah.”

It's not Rachel who opens the door, but Stan. Danny tries hard not to bristle. The thing about Stan that gets Danny is not that he's the symbol of the life Danny could have had, although that certainly doesn't help; it's the fact that Stan gets to work as a stand-in. He gets to open the door when Grace comes back for the week. He gets to buy Grace the iPad.

“How's it going, Stan?” They shake hands, and Grace slips inside to drop her pillows and backpack at the bottom of the stairs and balance the rabbit cage carefully on the first step. She comes back to stand next to Stan in the doorway while he and Danny make polite small talk.

“Danno?” she interrupts, quietly.

“Yeah, Monkey.”

She looks down. “I think I left Miss Thing at Uncle Steve’s.”

He sighs, squints at her. “Didn’t I say to you, before we left, that you were supposed to check and make sure you had everything?”

“Yes.”

“And did you check?”

“...Yes.”

Stan interjects, “Why don't you pick up the Barbie next weekend, Grace?”

This is clearly not acceptable to Grace, because she turns on Danny with the world’s largest pair of puppy-dog eyes. “Could you get it from Steve’s?”

“Sure. I’ll drop it off tomorrow, okay, babe?”

She breathes an exaggerated sigh of relief, slumping against the door jamb. It gets a laugh out of both Danny and Stan.

“Okay,” says Danny, “Grace, I'm gonna head out, but I’ll see you tomorrow to drop off Miss Thing, okay?”

“Okay.” When he bends down to hug her again, she squeezes him tight and says, “see you tomorrow, Danno.” Then she's gone into the house, leaving Danny to awkwardly excuse himself and walk back to his car. Sunday nights are the worst.

\-- 

He calls Steve on his way back to the apartment. “Long time no see,” Steve says, “D’you forget something?”

“ _I_ didn't,” Danny clarifies, “Grace left her Barbie." 

“Uh oh. She need it tonight?”

“No, I told her I’d bring it over tomorrow. Can you find it and bring it to whatever bizzaro crime scene we end up at tomorrow morning?”

“Sure thing, Danno.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Sure thing, Daniel.” He can almost hear Steve’s shit-eating grin over the phone, can hardly stop his own helpless one in response.

“God, shut up, I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Night, Danny.” 

\--

His apartment feels small and empty when he gets back to it, but he ignores the familiar Sunday-night feeling and heads right to the bathroom for a shower. The bathroom itself isn't anything to write home about, but the water pressure is divine, and on days when the trail has gone cold or one of the good guys got shot, this shower is sometimes the only thing that keeps him sane.

Tonight, it's just a nice shower. He's not scrubbing anything off himself beyond the usual dirt of a day well-enjoyed: salt, sweat, and sand. Three years ago he would have told you that combination meant a really terrible day, but things change. There was also a time when he couldn't stand Steve, and look where they are now.

Speaking of-- “What?”

Steve sounds kind of guilty over the phone. “What's the Barbie look like, Danny?”

“Why, you can't tell which Barbies are yours and which are Grace’s?”

Steve huffs a laugh. “Can't find it. I checked the living room, the lanai--”

“Patio.”

“ _Lanai_ , the beach… Where else did she go today?”

“I don't know, the bathroom?”

Danny can hear Steve walking through the house. “Hmm. Maybe. Let me… Nope. Nothing.”

“Uh…” He looks up, thinking, waves a hand in the air, “It’s a Barbie, how far could it have gotten?”

More sounds of Steve moving around, flipping through things. “I don't see why I have to do all the looking.”

“What, you want me to go back and get Grace?”

“No, dumbass, I meant you should come over and help. I’ll give you a beer.”

“I bought that beer.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve says, and Danny already knows he’s going to get dressed in actual clothes again and he's going to get back in his car. It's only 8:15, but it's muggy and quiet on the drive over, and Danny’s a little sleepy after so much sun and beer. He can't even muster up the usual bitching when he gets the Steve’s, because Steve has clearly just showered and smells good, and hands him a beer as soon as he gets inside the door.

\--

It starts with the Barbie but it ends with two more beers between them and the ratty afghan on Steve’s couch.

Danny knows what Steve’s doing, okay, he's not stupid. Steve’s got his schedule memorized backwards and sideways, and he’s accurately predicted that without intervention Danny won't be his usual fun, cheery self at work tomorrow. That's what this is, a flimsy excuse to get him here, ply him with Longboards, make him sleep on the couch and not think about the upcoming week without Grace. Give him something else to bitch about in the morning: achy back, no appropriate workwear on hand, hangover. 

It doesn't always fully work, but it certainly helps.

Tonight, Danny finds Steve’s flimsy excuse under the easy chair in the office, hidden by the dust ruffle. “You'd think that a Navy SEAL who’s _trained_ to locate and eliminate things that move and shoot would be able to find a friggin’ kid’s toy,” Danny grouches at him, weirdly proud of himself, “Barbies can't camouflage or throw grenades, Steve.”

Steve’s spread out on the couch, grinning, completely unperturbed. “Found a Barbie in a bomb once,” he says, like that's not totally horrifying, “Anyway, I didn't know Grace even went into the office today.”

“Me neither, but that kid gets everywhere.” Danny drops himself onto the couch. Steve yanks his legs back just in time to avoid them getting sat on, and Danny grabs his ankles and pushes, laughing. Steve sits up.

“So what's next,” Danny asks, taking a pull on his beer, “We gonna practice speed-cleaning a Glock?”

Steve puts on his ‘who, me?’ face and shrugs. “It's kinda late, thought you'd be heading home.”

“Kinda deviating from the norm, there, babe.”

“Yeah.” Steve smiles at him. “Okay, how about we go for a swim?”

Danny makes a big show of checking out the window. “It's gonna be dark soon. Plus, I just showered.”

“You could shower here afterwards.”

“No, thank you. I'm not subjecting my hair to whatever off-brand dollar store shit you've got up there.” Although whatever Steve’s using it certainly smells nice.

Steve’s got a guilty look on his face. “I have some nicer stuff,” he says, reaching for his beer. “Picked up some of the conditioner you use the other day, thought I’d try it.”

Danny has to table his many questions for another time (how does he know what conditioner Danny uses?) because otherwise he’ll probably embarrass himself. “And is it making your hair any less terrible?” Thoughtlessly, he reaches out and runs his fingers down the back of Steve’s scalp, terrible idea, terrible idea. He pulls back and uses the same hand to grab for his second (third) beer since he got back, give him something to do besides think about how yes, the conditioner is definitely working.

Steve clears his throat. “Haven't used any of it yet,” he says, like Danny isn't behaving like the world’s biggest weirdo, “But my point is that your hair would not suffer from a night swim.”

“Answer’s still no, babe. I showered this morning and I don't need three showers in a day. How about a game of Battleship. That seems right up your alley.”

They end up with the tv on, watching some soccer game that Danny has absolutely no interest in. Steve’s taking up more space on the couch than he needs, his arm spread along the back, forearm against Danny’s neck every time one of them moves. It's a normal, everyday, casual touch, and it's not the first time they've sat together like this. Steve likes the alpha male bullshit, and Danny’s used to it.

Doesn't mean it doesn't get his heart racing, core body temperature flushing up whenever Steve shifts and brushes closer.

He finishes his beer with a flourish. “I'm getting another. You want one?” Forces himself to stand, look Steve in the eye, wave his empty bottle at him.

“Nah,” Steve says, “I’m good.” As Danny’s heading into the kitchen he calls, “How many have you had today, Danno?”

“I don't know, six?”

“Hmm.”

Danny turns and glares at him. “What are you trying to say?”

Steve makes his ‘who, me?’ face again and Danny huffs, turns to the fridge. “Oh, screw you, Steve. Fine. I’m drinking this bottle of weird shit instead.” He holds it up, squints at it, puts it back in the fridge. “No, I’m not. That looks fucking disgusting.”

He takes a lot of deep, steadying breaths for a minute, just standing in the kitchen. It's cooling off, but his face feels hot, and he can’t get a read on Steve, and it’s driving him crazy. He’s been dealing with his crush, okay. They make a lot of jokes, the two of them, call each other ‘babe’ more times than is generally acceptable in the Manly Handbook of Life, and it’s fine. It’s jokes. But moments like this come along, where Steve is soft around the edges and looks at him with such open affection--Danny’s not really built to withstand that kind of thing.

When he comes back into the living room, the look on Steve’s face makes Danny stop short. Steve isn't watching the tv--his eyes are trained on Danny, partially lidded, soft. Everything about him right now looks so damn inviting, and Danny’s desire to touch clashes with the desire to _hold_ , neither one winning outright, and it’s not like they’re mutually exclusive. It doesn’t matter. He’s made a decision, somewhere in the haze of his brain, and he crosses to the tv and bends to shut it off.

He’s not thinking. In the sudden darkness of the living room, it's easy to flip the imaginary bird at the heavy weight of nerves that has settled in his chest for the last hour. He looks at Steve, a dark smudge against the sofa, and doesn't see the unattainable. “Come on, babe,” he says, “Get up.”

And Steve does.

It's strange, because when Steve first wrangled his way into Danny’s life he had seemed an entire foot too tall, but as the two of them found equal footing Danny stopped noticing the difference. But here in the hushed darkness of Steve’s living room, it's all Danny can focus on. It feels like Steve is towering over him, like any moment he’ll grow too tall for the room and will have to bend forward over Danny, drape himself down Danny’s back and around him, like a snake.

“Okay,” Danny says, “Upstairs. Come on.” He makes shooing motions and then gets his hands on Steve, re-orienting him to face towards the stairs and then sliding up his back and across his shoulders, both hands settling on his biceps. Steve, thank god, goes with it, but Danny still feels a small frission of fear when Steve pauses and turns toward the door, away from Danny’s hands. But he’s just double-checking the lock on the front door and turning on the alarm (it doesn't beep a warning, which means all the other exits and first floor windows are also locked--Danny had to sit through a very long lecture from Steve about it after he installed it). Then he's glancing at Danny with a small smile and heading toward the stairs again, this time out of Danny’s reach.

“You with me?” Steve asks, hovering a few steps up. Danny realizes he's been standing there in the living room for a minute, suddenly overwhelmed. His mouth falls open and then snaps closed, and he shuts his eyes for just a moment.

Opens them. “Okay, yeah, always,” he says quietly, following Steve up the stairs, finding it easier to move at the familiar sight of Steve taking them two at a time. There's more light upstairs, from the hallway nightlight Steve installed the last time Danny and Grace slept over. It helps, because Danny’s not as familiar with the second floor as he is with the first, and desperately wants to avoid walking into something and ruining the live-wire tension that's zinging through his body.

Steve’s waiting for him in the doorway to his bedroom, bare feet planted firmly on the carpet. “ _Danny_ ,” he says, when Danny trips forward and gets his face in the crook of Steve’s neck, starting to shake so hard with it he might fall apart. Steve’s hands slide up his back and into his hair, the touch so good Danny barely stops himself from making an embarrassing noise, and he presses closer, desperate.

“God, Steve,” he says into the skin of Steve’s jaw, tilting his face up, up, up. He can feel the answering full-body shudder, and it’s enough, tells him what he needs to know. “Just--can you--”

“Yeah,” Steve whispers, dragging his hands back down Danny’s back to grip his hips, just as Danny sucks an open-mouthed kiss just below his ear, “Oh, fuck.”

And Danny finds he doesn’t have any built-in resistance to the sound of Steve’s sharp inhale when he bites down, so he does it again, drags himself along Steve’s jaw until he can get to his mouth. He can’t help it, makes a wounded noise when one of Steve’s hands leaves his hip to settle, gently, at the nape of his neck.

Danny doesn’t, as a rule, kiss a lot of men. But Steve kisses him like, god, like he’s been starving for it, and Danny finds that he doesn’t dislike the hint of stubble under his fingers and against his mouth, or the fact that he’s craning his neck so far back it’s starting to ache. And he’s sure as hell not complaining about the way Steve sucks his lower lip into his mouth, or the way his hands can’t seem to stay still--in his hair, stroking along his jaw, digging into the space between his shoulderblades, their bodies pressed so close together Danny can barely breathe.

It occurs to him suddenly that this is just--too easy. He thinks of Catherine, and the way their relationship had been, and it’s like a bucket of ice water down his spine, makes him gasp and rear back. “Wait a second,” he says, as Steve makes his way down towards his collar, mouth hot and slick, “Wait, hold on. Steve.”

“What.” A kiss, wicked and lush, to the base of his neck.

Danny sucks in a gulp of air, trying to get himself under control. “I don’t--I can’t do casual,” he says, voice too loud, immediately feeling like an idiot. He’s always been that guy, asked Rachel where their relationship was headed on their _third_ date, for god’s sakes, but it doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. It’s important, though, especially now, with Steve, when there’s so much he could lose with a one night stand and a “thanks, Danny, see you at work,” in the morning. He has to know.

Steve pulls back and looks him in the eye, sober and a little affronted. “I know, Danno. I thought you… knew that.”

“I, well, yeah. I guess you’ve noticed that, about me. I just, you know--noticed, with you, and Catherine, that was very casual, textbook definition of casual, which I, as you apparently know, do not do.”

“Right. You're not Catherine.”

He smooths a hand down his own chest, _hey, no boobs!_ “Yes, obviously. But you can't blame a guy for jumping to certain conclusions about another guy’s relationship preferences when he’s only got the one--very casual one--to draw on.”

“Fine.” Steve squares his body like he’s wearing his dress blues and addressing a superior officer. “I’ll lay it out for you. This is not casual. I'm making you pancakes tomorrow. You’ve already got space in the guest closet for clothes because you stay over here so often. You and I are not going to date other people. Okay? Can we…?” He jerks his head towards the bedroom, classic McGarrett impatience, making Danny smile helplessly.

“Yeah, alright.” And he lets Steve pull him in towards his body and the bed, into the warm rough slide of his palms, and finally succumbs to the long-needed ache of Steve’s sweet, unhurried, desperate kisses.

\--

He wakes up in the early morning to the sound of Steve’s heart under his ear, racing a mile a minute. The clock on the nightstand reads 5:27, which means Steve’s probably been awake for awhile--on a normal day he’d already be out in the ocean by now. Instead, he’s laying here under Danny, panicking.

“Hey,” Danny whispers, sliding himself up and over Steve’s shoulder so their heads are side by side on the pillow, “Stop it.”

Steve cracks an eye open to look at him. “Not doing anything.”

“That's a bold-faced lie.”

“Go back to sleep, Danny.”

He pushes his face in close to Steve’s, smiles into his skin, gives up. “Not going anywhere,” he says, and then he’s asleep again.

\--

If Danny had given it any serious thought, he would have sworn that Steve would be out of bed before Danny woke up the second time. During the three weeks Danny was sleeping on Steve’s couch, there had been exactly one day when Danny was awake before Steve got into the water, and that was because Steve had stubbed his toe and cursed and woken him up. More often than not Danny had startled awake to the sound of the blender in the kitchen and Steve’s shit-eating grin when Danny threw a pillow in his vague direction.

Today he wakes up and Steve is right there next to him, fast asleep and snoring a little. He's flat on his back, mouth hanging open, dried drool caked to the side of his face (gross). More importantly, he's got one hand stretched out towards Danny, fingers brushing against his stomach every time Danny breathes, and a little bit of beard burn on his chin from kissing Danny senseless last night. He's fucking cute. Danny can feel a sappy grin threatening to stretch over his own face if he doesn't watch out.

He steals out of bed and casts around for his pants. His phone is tucked into the back pocket, and he gets a short video of Steve for blackmail purposes later before he heads to the bathroom to pee and then stare at himself in the mirror, wondering how he got here in the first place.

“Danny?”

Steve’s voice is sleep-rough and a little anxious, like he's checking to see if Danny’s even here. When Danny pokes his head back into the room, it's to see Steve sitting on the edge of the bed in his briefs, looking weirdly vulnerable. Danny’s seen him mostly naked before--many times--but he's stuck on a feedback loop of all that skin under his hands and the way Steve had said his name, like it scared him. It must show on his face because Steve tilts his head towards the bed, an invitation, and wraps his hand around the back of Danny’s neck when he inevitably complies.

It feels nice to have Steve’s fingers stroking along his hairline, to have his mouth pressed against Danny’s. It feels even nicer to gently push Steve back and spread out on top of him, to just neck like teenagers for awhile in the morning sunlight of Steve’s room. Feels fucking fantastic to buck against him when they both get hard and Steve slips a hand into his boxers, still kissing, getting hungrier, more desperate.

They hadn't done this last night, too overwhelmed and frankly a little too tipsy for it to have been any good. But now it’s good, it's great. Danny pulls Steve’s hand away and scrabbles to get naked before pulling impatiently at Steve’s briefs, groaning when he gets them off and they slot together, hard and warm and soft and _fuck_ , so fucking good.

It doesn't take long for Danny to come, shoving into Steve’s body with a yelp. He flops down for a moment to catch his breath, kisses Steve’s shoulder. Steve’s still hard, Danny can feel him against his hip, but he’s being patient, strokes his hand up and down Danny’s back like he’s gentling a horse, while Danny calms down.

After a minute, though, he flips them over and hovers above Danny, mouth hanging open in pleasure as he strips his own cock, faster than Danny usually likes it. He probably learned that in the Navy, where everything is methodical and to-the-point. Another time, Danny’s going to teach him how good it feels to go slow.

In the meantime, though, he just gets his hands everywhere, stroking across Steve’s shoulders, his pecs, his abs. He doesn't try to take over, just watches hungrily and then kisses Steve, hard, when he chokes out a “Fu- _uck_ ,” and comes all over Danny’s stomach.

“Should we talk about this?” Danny asks, after their heartbeats have resumed normal operating procedure and Steve has wiped them down (with Danny’s shirt, because he’s predictable). He flops a hand sideways and hits Steve in the arm. “Huh?”

“Danny, we talked about this last night. I'm making you pancakes. We’ll go on dates.”

“Yeah, okay. But we have not covered all the bases here, babe.” He doesn't miss the way ‘babe’ sends a little shiver through Steve. “For example, who is going to tell the team? _Are_ we going to tell the team? When do I tell Grace? For that matter, _how_ do I tell Grace?”

“She's a smart kid, Danny.”

“I know that. You don't think I know that?”

“I mean,” Steve starts, then swallows, “She’s probably already figured it out.”

“Figured _what_ out? We’re not-- we haven't-- it's been less than 24 hours, here, Steven.”

“For you, maybe. I’ve been pretty… obvious. For a while.” When Danny tilts his head to stare at him, Steve is squinting at the ceiling, embarrassed. “We don't have to tell the team, anyway,” he continues, “They've had bets going for three months, at least.”

“Well,” Danny says after a moment, having difficulty getting past ‘a while’ and the twin spots of pink on Steve’s cheeks, “Who’s up if we tell them now? Think we could get a cut out of the winnings?”

And Steve laughs, curls sideways into Danny, saying, “You're a menace,” and kissing him again, like he can't get enough. 

\--

Danny doesn't get any pancakes that morning, because they get a case and don't have time, but he figures Steve will just have to make it up to him.

They chase down the perp with the raggedy Miss Thing perched in the cup holder of the Camaro, and Danny’s hand warm on Steve’s knee. 

Danny doesn't tell Steve he’s still got dried drool on his face until after they've caught and interrogated their guy, and Steve tackles him into a door and uses Danny’s sleeve to scratch it off. And kisses him for good measure.

Chin gets the winnings, and doesn't share a penny.


End file.
